The Weight of Should Have Been
by PhoenixDragonDreamer
Summary: She wanted to be angry. The Doctor wasn't magical, he wasn't a god or a wizard. He was an old man that made a promise long before he met her – and though she wished to hate him for that, she never could.


**Warnings:** Introspection, Character Study, Angst, Speculation, Dark!Fic  
**A/N:** So imagine my dismay when I'm combing through my WIPs (looking for something to fiddle with as a procrastination tactic) and I find this fiction just sitting there. It was written during my 'hysterical dry-spell' and was just left to moulder in my notes because I thought (at the time) that maybe there was more to say. I can't remember what it was written _for_ - though there were plenty of challenges going around at the time. And while I have challenges yet to write for (some VERY late, some just starting), I thought I would give this a look-over and polish before leaving it here for others to read. I still don't know if it is complete. I don't even know if it is coherent or within the lines of the character (as Amy has always been an elusive and slippery character to me). But it is here and left to you all to decide. As always, mostly unbeta'd and written in one go, so please forgive any mistakes and/or blatant vagueness. I apologize for any repetition, misspellings, sentence fails, grammatical oh-noes and general horridness. Unbeta'd fic is overly-thinky/blithery and unbeta'd. (Fic originally written/finished 01.05.13)  
**Disclaimer(s): **_I do not own the scrumptious Doctor or his lovely companions. That honor goes to the BBC and (for now) the fantastic S. Moffat. The only thing that belongs to me is this fiction - and I am making no profit. Only playing about!_

* * *

It wasn't so much that they snatched her from her house, taking her quietly out of the backdoor even as her new husband slept the sleep of the unaware and the content. It wasn't that they replaced her with an Amy Pond who wasn't an Amy Pond. That they forced her to dream to keep that Amy alive and talking and deceiving all those she loved. It wasn't even the fact that they had somehow gotten past her Raggedy Man, her magical imaginary friend from the stars: sneaking aboard his TARDIS, likely while he was looking right at them, and setting a trap that would keep the 'new' Amy Pond-Williams walking and talking and living her life.

It was the _reason _they did these things.

They took her and put her to dreaming, keeping her mind occupied, quelling all rebellion with terror, lies and sleeping gas. They took her pregnancy away from her – the joy shared with her husband and her best friend. Watching her belly grow and eating odd things and complaining about how fat she was while Rory smiled and soothed her with his Roryiness – her best friend waiting in the wings to bring odd baby clothes and toys from distant stars (because he would have, she knew he would have). They took the joy that her little family (because he was included, too, her Raggedy Man – long before she knew of – )

They took that joy, that discovery, that newness…and they took her child. A final insult, a final slap. She woke up in time to discover she was pregnant and giving birth. All preparation, all the good things that could have come with it reduced to mindless terror and primitive fear – surrounded by people who cared nothing for her, except for her ability to birth a weapon.

Then they took her away. Her Melody. They took her and twisted her and denied her the love she and Rory were capable of. They took her because of her Raggedy Man (though she never blamed him, how could she when he did enough of that himself?) – they took her baby, her little one away because she was a friend of the Doctor's. Because she was convenient. Because they _could_. They took her and changed her because of her best friend and the enemies he had made. They changed her at the cellular level, the mental level, the emotional level: she never got to know the love, the joy she would have brought. They took Amy's and Rory's Melody…and they took away all she could have been.

She wanted to be angry. The Doctor wasn't magical, he wasn't a god or a wizard. He was an old man that made a promise long before he met her – and though she wished to hate him for that, she never could. Because he made that promise to her daughter. Her lovely daughter who never asked for anything but one – and he kept that promise. He had kept (and broken) many promises to Amy and Rory, but there was just one he had to keep; for a lonely little girl who had nothing to hold out hope for but the time she would get to know him. She would learn love, compassion and hope through him. In the end, Amy couldn't be angry at him for that.

So she focused on the ones who had brought this about. The ones who had ripped the timelines apart so thoroughly they forced this to happen long before Amy was even born.

They had taken a lot of things (The Order of the Silence): they had taken Amy and Rory's joy, the hope of the future, the ability to have more children. The peace and comfort that they hadn't known of until it was taken away. They took their baby. They took that baby's innocence and childhood and destroyed it while building her into something else.

And they took her name.

River Song (strong, confident, capable, clever River) was once Melody Pond. But the Silence took that, too. They took the name Amy bestowed on her with love and made it something to hate and fear. Her own name was used as a weapon against her – a way to cow her and keep her in line. Melody Pond became a superhero, but only when she threw away the name that kept her under hatred's yoke and took one of her own. It was essentially the same name, but that wasn't really the point.

But Kovarian learned, at the end of all things. She knew of the name Pond and all that it could mean in an alternate universe far from time itself. She learned what the name Pond _really_ meant – and how it could turn whole worlds on its axis. That time was gone. In all honesty, it never was. But that didn't mean Amy didn't remember.

Amy wanted to tell him – her Raggedy Man, her imaginary friend from the stars – that she was sorry, but not for the reasons anyone could guess at. She wasn't sorry she killed Kovarian. She wasn't sorry that she electrified the woman as she begged for her life. She was sorry that Kovarian dared to bring her child into it. That she dared to ask for mercy in her best friend's name – the man she intended to kill (again and again and again).

_She didn't get it all from you, _sweetie_…_

She was sorry she couldn't do it again. For her Rory. For her long dead Melody Pond (who was now very much alive as River Song). For her Raggedy Man and the heartbreak he felt he had caused. For the baby who lost the name her mother had given her in love. She would do it again in a heartbeat – and she was sorry that she didn't care.

She was almost sorry (almost) that the apple didn't fall far from the tree. She may have lost her name, but she carried the fierceness of her mother and the steadfast love of her father in her hearts.

The mad, impossible River Song.

The madman in a blue box.

Who else could capture the heart of a Pond-Williams? And who else could keep such an impetuous man-child in line? She could never be sorry for that. She could never (in the end) be angry over the outcome: the outcome her daughter didn't wish to alter. She could never truly regret the ending.

But it didn't change the (deep, satisfying, brutal) wish to have killed Madame Kovarian twice.

And despite what her daughter thought (no, there was no remorse here), what Rory would have done, what her Raggedy Man would have said – she wasn't sorry about that at all…


End file.
